Carol Voss - Instant Daddy

Jessie met her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said automatically.

“Well, you don’t look fine.” Lisa handed the steaming coffee to Will.

“Thanks,” he said.

Jessie ducked through the curtain and headed for the play corner she’d fenced off near one of the long windows. “Look, Jake. There’s Thomas the engine, right where you left him.”

“Tomut!” Jake threw himself with glee, totally oblivious to the concept of gravity.

But Jessie was ready for his lunge and stopped him from falling. She hoped he outgrew his habit before he got much heavier and harder to contain. “Slow down, okay?”

Jake touched her cheek in the sweet apology that always melted her heart. Then he turned, wriggling for release.

She bent over the mesh fence to set him down, pain stabbing her hip and making her catch her breath. “There you go.”

“There you goes,” he mimicked, scurrying to his low train table.

Will chuckled. “He’s talking more every day.” Setting his empty plate near the sink, he leaned against the counter. “How’d you hurt your leg?”

Jessie frowned. “My leg is fine.”

Will took a sip of coffee and wisely decided to change the subject. “You outdid yourself with that raspberry-rhubarb pie. I think it’s my new favorite.” He gave her a little grin.

She attempted a smile, then gave it up as she hurried to the fireproof safe where she kept her important papers. Grasping her ring of keys from her purse, she knelt and unlocked the box. She clasped the folder marked “Jake,” struggled to her feet and handed it to Will.

He looked at the identifying tab, then at Jessie. “Jake?”

“Clarissa hired a lawyer she knew in New York to handle the legal work for the private adoption. I’m sure everything is as it should be, but will you look at it to make sure?”

“Any reason for your sudden interest?”

She squinted. “It seems I met Jake’s father today. He made the scholarship presentation at graduation. He says Clarissa didn’t tell him about Jake.” Her words sounded clipped, almost matter-of-fact, but the breathless panic ringing in her ears told the real story.

Will set his cup beside his pie plate, bent his head and thumbed through the contents of the folder.

Hanging on to a calm she didn’t feel, Jessie tried to read Will’s face as he studied Jake’s birth certificate and papers documenting the adoption. “We dotted every i and crossed every t, didn’t we?”

Will looked up. “The documents that are here look perfect.”

She wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but his serious tone warned her there was more.

“In Wisconsin, a single mother doesn’t need to identify the father on the baby’s birth certificate, but if Clarissa didn’t tell him she was pregnant, and his DNA proves he’s the father, he has a legitimate claim.”

Jessie stared in horror. “How much of a claim?”

“He’d need a court order, but if he has the means to care for Jake, a judge could very well award him at least partial custody.”

“No,” she heard herself moan, pain wrenching deep inside.

“I’m really sorry, Jess. Why didn’t Clarissa tell him?”

“She said he was completely uninterested in being a father. I had no idea she hadn’t told him. She wouldn’t even tell me who the father was.” A thought nudged Jessie’s mind. Had her sister wanted to give Jessie her dream of being a mother so much that she’d convinced herself the father wouldn’t care? If Dr. Sheridan hadn’t come to Noah’s Crossing to present the scholarship, Jake’s father’s would still be a mystery.

“Look—even if he proves to be Jake’s father, are you sure he wants custody?” Will asked.

Jessie thought about the look on Dr. Sheridan’s face when he’d reached out to touch Jake. About the intensity in his tone when he’d insisted Clarissa had no right to give Jake away. She swiped at tears clouding her vision. “I don’t know. But he can’t have Jake. You have to help me. I’ll do whatever I need to do.”

“Are you convinced the guy is Jake’s dad?”

She’d give anything to be able to say no. Promise anything if God would just make the man go away like none of this was happening. But she knew things didn’t work that way. “Yes. I believe he is Jake’s father.”

“Then try to find a compromise to keep him from taking you to court.”

“Compromise?” She shook her head. “I’ll never compromise where Jake is concerned.”

“Wouldn’t a compromise be better than losing him?”

She drew a sharp breath.

“It could happen, Jess.”

“Doesn’t it matter that Jake’s mother didn’t want the father to know? That she wanted me to raise him?”

“It’s a factor in your favor. So are the adoption papers. But…I know Jake means the world to you. I don’t advise you to risk it.” Will handed the file folder to her. “Is the guy married?”

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t wear a ring anyway.”

“Does he know anything about raising kids?”

“I don’t know that, either.” She put the folder back in the safe, fumbled to lock it, then dropped her keys in her purse.

Will rubbed the back of his neck. “The thought of being a single dad would scare me to death. Watching all you do with Jake, I can see I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to take care of a kid.”

Her mind seized on Will’s words. If Dr. Sheridan was single…did he know what being a single father would involve? If he knew, would he be afraid of taking it on like Will was?

“Jess.” Lisa held the curtain divider aside. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but a tall, good-looking guy in a suit insists on seeing you. And he’s not a patient man.”

Feeling more in charge of things, Peter brushed rain off his shoulders, the succulent aroma of roasting meat and mouth-watering sweets in Jessie’s Main Street Diner reminding him he hadn’t eaten lunch. He ignored the din of diners eating at the busy counter and gave a curt nod to the tall, unfriendly looking guy emerging through the colorful curtain, cup of coffee in hand. A relative? A boyfriend? Was Jessie circling the wagons already?

Well, gentle and vulnerable or not, let her try to stop him from seeing his son and he’d straighten her out in a hurry. He’d called his attorney, who had assured him that he did, indeed, have responsibilities and rights if he was the boy’s father, and his rights could even trump hers in a court of law if Peter decided to take it that far.

Strange. He was too absorbed in his research to think he’d ever get married, let alone have a kid. Finding out he had one was shocking, amazing and overwhelming. But he had to admit, the idea was beginning to grow on him.

Deep inside, he was convinced the boy was his. But that hadn’t stopped him from picking up DNA kits at the local drugstore. A few quick cheek swabs would prevent future questions…his or anybody else’s.

Clutching the drugstore bag, he ducked into the back room. His glance took in stoves, refrigerators and a huge sink. A long counter held baking paraphernalia, and shelves stacked with boxes lined one wall.

Jessie stood in the middle of the room, her blue eyes snapping with challenge, her slender body tense and skittish as a filly about to bolt.

He had the unmistakable urge to gentle her. A pretty outrageous thought from a guy who’d never had time for a serious relationship.

“Pedo.”

Peter grinned, amazed the little fella remembered his name. His gaze swept to the boy standing at a low table in a fenced-off corner filled with toys. The toddler was dwarfed by a mural on the wall above him of a blue train with an impish smile. “How’s it going, Jacob?”